The nightmares’ hooves crunched volcanic stones to dust as the blood knights picked their way down through the rock towers, negotiating the treacherous pass across the Adamantine Chain. Ash clouds mingled with smoke and steam from vents in the tortured earth creating a claustrophobic atmosphere but hiding the vampires from the sky vessels whose deep thrumming they could still hear high up above them.
“Dragonbeard still follows us, my Lord.”
“Yes Kastellan Trutz,” snapped Lord Tzunaak, “I can hear that. But the valley is close, I can smell its blood upon the air.”
Over the last few cycles, Tzunaak’s chiropteran spies had reported more skirmishes between the various factions converging on the scorched outskirts of the Adamantine Chain. Inevitably, the Skaven had poked their twitching snouts out of the blackened earth, but two rival clans had been beaten back by Stormcast and Kharadron Overlords respectively. There was much excitement in the Soulblight camp that the Stormcast in question were the Gravewalkers, longtime foes of the undead of Barfunweltz, including of the Templars Ascendent. And the Duardin who had performed the devastating raid on one of the Skaven encampments were those who even now tracked Tzunaak’s army.
As they descended, the vampiric cavaliers emerged from the underside of the densest ash clouds. A scorched valley lay before them, split with lava rifts, spiked with rock spires, and littered here and there with bodies and blood stains. Peering through the gloom, Tzunaak could make out a few small patches of what could be glowing emberstone. He scanned the scree slopes, looking for the best routes by which to descend.
But then with a howling gust of wind, the clouds before them parted. Dragonbeard’s Expedition had finally descended. Who was to control this desolate valley - Gravelords or Overlords?
My second game of our Ravaged Coast campaign and I'm up against Toby's Karadron Overlords. We rolled the 'Blood in the Valleys' battleplan. I've bought a new ash wastes battle mat and I just finished some Aqshy specific terrain and emberstone counters so I'm looking forward to seeing how they all look on the table. I always enjoy playing Toby, he's a great sport but also really good at the game so I'm a bit nervous about how this one will work out...
* * *
Lord Tzunaak opened his eyes but allowed himself a few more moments in the comfort of his casket. The healing ritual had taken some time, but he was restored - physically, at least. Reluctantly, he allowed himself to recall the battle with the sky duardin. Even after many centuries of combat, theirs was an army unlike any he had faced before - it was as if the grim darkness of some far future had been visited upon the Ravaged Coast.
Observing that their blasphemous technology granted them astonishing speed and firepower, Tzunaak had initially chosen to hold his forces back and spread out in the hope of tempting the enemy to move up so his knights could pick off isolated units. But their Captain Dragonbeard was far too clever to fall for such a ruse and Tzunaak realised he would have to assault the flying castle. Surely, such cowards who relied on moving fast and dealing damage at distance would fall quickly in the confines of close combat? Ordering the glorious charge, he had led his knights from the front as they thundered across the blasted valley, clouds of ash billowing in their wake.
But having initially drawn his forces back, the Brotherhood of Mannfred had too far to travel to bring their charge to bear and the Kharadrons seized the opportunity to counter. Diminutive duardin leapt aboard their sky ship which surged forward accompanied by other warriors wielding strange pikes as they swung beneath floating metal orbs. And so, like a flying castle, the enemy formation had taken down his vampire cavalry piecemeal, using its manoeuvrability to isolate them, its gun batteries to shoot them, and it alien combat weaponry to finish them off.
Lord Tzunaak himself had succeed in charging into the fray, but having outpaced the Obsidiann Brethren he had found himself isolated, surrounded and swiftly torn from his nightmare to be left lying in the ashes. Voltaire the Mortified had attempted to make off with some emberstone, but the sky ship had run him down too. Only Heisenberg's Panthers had managed to achieve anything of note, finally charging in and devastating a unit of Kharadron foot soldiers to steal the emberstone shard they were carrying.
Lord Tzunaak closed his eyes again. He needed a few more moments in his casket to resettle his troubled mind.
Well, that was 'different'! The Blood in the Valleys battleplan is unusual in that it has no objectives - you are just trying to survive. And the Kharadron Overlords army plays very differently from other Age of Sigmar forces. Combining those two things made for a very strange kind of game - and one I'm not sure how to win! My pre-game plan had been to just charge everyone at the Overlords' guns but seeing them castle up I 'though better of it'. Maybe that's what I should have done, rather than delaying a couple of turns, but I have a feeling I would just have died sooner! Perhaps, I should have kept playing it safe and not charged in until right at the every end - if at all - but that just didn't feel like what Lord Tzunaak would have done. And for me, if you don't play 'in character' you're doing it wrong - even if that means losing!
Anyway, I still managed to gain 2 emberstone shards, and although I took battle wounds across the army, I managed to heal quiet a few. I have saved one shard, but I simply had to reward Heisenberg's Panthers by putting them on the Path of the Revenant.
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